The future of cricket in Malta

I refer to the article Immigrants Fire Up Italian Interest (September 24) wherein Mark Meadows informs us of the state of Italian cricket.

I would like to take the opportunity to inform readers of the plight of Maltese cricket.

Cricket has been played in Malta for nearly two centuries now... though mostly confined, perhaps by design, to the British residents till the late 1970s.

Since then, Maltese cricket has had its moments of glory. In the past decade, Malta has reached the semi-final stage of the European Championships in its division, the last time being the 2007 championships held in Belgium.

So far, the Maltese national squad has beaten national teams from Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Portugal, Switzerland and Spain - a record, perhaps, not equalled by a national team of Malta in any other sport.

This year, the Marsa Sports Club, home of cricket in Malta, has upgraded its irrigation system and re-seeded the ground, a venture costing tens of thousands of euros. The total assistance the Malta Cricket Association has received this year is a one-time grant of €7,000 from the Good Causes Fund and €1,165 from the MOC.

Never before in the sports' history have so few achieved so much with so little.

There is only one cricket ground in Malta for which the cricket section has to pay an annual rent of €1,500. Apart from the success on the field, Maltese cricket has done remarkably well in making Malta the No.1 destination for cricket tours in the Mediterranean and, possibly, Europe outside the UK.

This year, 25 cricket teams, from countries which include New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia, Cyprus and the UK, will have visited Malta - another achievement probably unequalled by any other team sport. But all this is not going to last if we fail to maintain good facilities and a good standard of cricket. The 2009 European Championships will probably be a swan-song for the Maltese national team. This is the situation, as Malta shall not be allowed to participate in another championship after 2010 by the governing body of world cricket, the International Cricket Council (the ICC), if we do not have at least two cricket grounds where competitive cricket is played... and with that perhaps the end of cricket-based tourism in Malta!

The reason for the lugubrious contrast between the fortunes of Italian cricket, which we defeated in 1992 in the European Cup, and Maltese cricket is only too obvious. Will the wheel of fortune turn? I can only hope.